


Against and Behind a Wall

by aintweproudriff



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Meet-Cute, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, but i love newsbians, college library, i know i said i wouldn't write newsies anymore, kath is an english major, sarah is an art major, semi based on real life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 21:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20264869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aintweproudriff/pseuds/aintweproudriff
Summary: Katherine needs a quiet place to study. Sarah can't help herself from drawing on the pages of a cute girl's notebook.





	Against and Behind a Wall

**Author's Note:**

> How fitting that I'm using my last night in my childhood home before going to college writing newsies fanfiction about college.

For the past few weeks, Katherine had set aside time to study and finish her homework after class, but she hadn’t been able to find a good place to study. Most of the library was either too loud or too quiet, the space for the students in the honor’s college was either packed or deserted, and she hated studying in her dorm room. 

Davey, from her Literature class, had suggested she come up to the top floor of the library and go all the way over to the west corner.   
“I always go up to the top floor to study, because it’s quiet and relaxing, and the only people there are ones who want to ask you if you think their work makes sense,” he told her as they were leaving class. “And I’ve never seen anyone use the west corner, so I think it could use some love.”

Katherine headed up there as soon as she said goodbye to him, pulling a granola bar from her bag and eating it on the way over. Finding the spot against the wall, she set up her paper notes, her highlighters, and pulled her chair in towards the table, enjoying the way it dragged over the plush rug beneath her. She was sure the actual fabric of it was disgustingly dirty, since it didn’t look like a janitor had cleaned this part of the library in a decade, but she didn’t mind. She brushed some of the dust off the table and got her laptop from her bag, opening it and pushing the power button.   
Her professor had assigned reading, and one look at it told her that it would be harder than anything they had done yet that semester. Instead of getting pissed about it (like that one guy in the back of the class), Katherine flipped back through her notes from earlier, and started looking at the poem step-by-step. 

She got invested in the work and forgot about time. The clock on her laptop said it was five-fifteen, and she knew that class had ended at four-thirty, so she must have only been there for forty-five minutes. Strange - it felt like hours. And still, she wasn’t done! She’d had an idea about the meter of the poem, and then had to go back through each line and comment on them individually.   
Footsteps echoed up through the stairwell, and Katherine looked up for the first time since she’d sat down. A girl with long brown hair in french braids, a black-and-white striped shirt tucked into a jean skirt, and a soft, round face stepped into the silent room, a sketchbook under her arm.   
Katherine pretended not to notice her, but watched her out of the corner of her eye as she scanned the room and realized there was one table that wasn’t covered in books, and that Katherine was sitting there. One part of her wanted this new girl to go away and let her study, but the other part of her brain wasn’t blind to the beautiful girl who had walked in to study. Silently, Katherine moved some of her papers away from the open seat on the other side of the table, as if to invite her.   
She wouldn’t admit to celebrating internally when the girl sat down - not even a little. Her logical studying side was supposed to win that battle. 

But it wasn’t bad for the studying side of her to have someone with her. She buckled right back down and started piecing apart the specific diction and tone in the poem, allowing herself to look up at the girl every few minutes.   
It took her a long time to figure out what the girl was doing. As she was preparing to tear into the last stanza for the third time (she had discovered a slight metaphor for the ocean that ran throughout the poem, and she wanted to dissect it), she glanced up to see that the girl was drawing. It wouldn’t have been strange for her to doodle, if it had been in her sketchbook, and not in Katherine’s notebook. Flowers and stars and animals lined the margins of her pages, along with some words she couldn’t quite make out. She debated for a moment, and then opened her mouth. 

“Um, excuse me,” she whispered, “why are you drawing on my notes?”

The girl looked up, her face turning pink. “Oh, I kinda couldn’t help it. I see blank paper and my mind just wanders. Sorry.”

“Well maybe I like having clean paper in my notebook,” Katherine leaned forward. “Seems pretty forward of you to jump in and doodle.”

“Yeah, I know,” she put down her pencil and her shoulders rose and fell. “I won’t do it anymore.”

“Thanks,” Katherine pulled her notebook back towards her, and tried to ignore how cute the cat in the top left-hand corner was. 

She worked for a few minutes more, until she had to flip the page. 

“I’m Sarah,” said loopy cursive on the heading line. “You’re cute.”

Katherine blushed in spite of herself. She knew this girl was cute, and she knew she was cute, but the fact that this girl - Sarah - thought she was cute seemed like a whole other level. 

“You think I’m cute?” she whispered. 

“Well duh,” Sarah replied, not looking up from her sketchbook. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have stolen your stuff in a - misguided, maybe - attempt to flirt.”

Oh. She was flirting. Whoops.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you. Well, whisper-yelled. ” Katherine pushed her notebook over. “Maybe you’d like to doodle your number somewhere on here?”

Sarah grinned. “I would love to. I don’t know your name, though.”

“Oh! I’m Katherine.”

“I’m Sarah.”

“I know,” Katherine smiled and tapped the doodle. “You wrote it down. Gave me the advantage.”

“Guess I did.”

Katherine sighed. “Hey, you know? I’m done in here if you are.”  
The studying part of her brain screamed, but she silenced it.   
“Do you want to head out? Grab a drink or ice cream or something?”

“I’d love to,” Sarah nodded, closing her sketchbook. 

The two of them closed the doors of the library behind them and breathed the fresh September air. Katherine looked up at the stars and felt drunk on something: moonlight, flirting, the way Sarah’s hand had brushed hers in the stairwell, the college promise of working hard and finding love. Impulsively, stupidly, she turned to the girl next to her. 

“Can I kiss you?”

She expected Sarah to say no, to give all sorts of very practical reasons why it would be a bad idea, to turn and run in the other direction. Instead, Sarah stepped forward and tilted her chin up towards Katherine’s. 

“Yes,” she whispered, her voice hushed even though they were no longer in the library. 

Now it was Katherine who wanted to protest. “Are you sure? We just met.”

Sarah wrapped her arms around Katherine’s neck and pulled her down gently, kissing her with her whole body. Katherine laughed, drunk on one more thing than before, and let herself lose the wall she’d wanted to keep.

**Author's Note:**

> (Davey definitely told Sarah about where to find the cute girl in his Lit class, but Kath won't discover that until MUCH later in the relationship)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Thanks so much for reading, and definitely let me know what you thought by leaving a kudo, comment, or by talking to me on tumblr @aintweproudriff or @lesbianpomatter!


End file.
